Deep Borehole Disposal of Nuclear Waste: Report from a Sandia ...

Introduction
On October 26, 2011 Sandia National Laboratories brought together twenty
representatives from the fields of radioactive waste disposal and drilling to:
review the state of deep borehole science and engineering; identify the
necessary features of a deep borehole pilot demonstration; and consider
organizational approaches to implementing a deep borehole pilot. Andrew
Orrell (Sandia) presented an overview of Deep Borehole Disposal with a
discussion of the vision and model for creating an industry/lab/academia
consortium to pursue a demonstration, followed by a discussion of borehole
pilot testing at the Climax stock in Nevada in the early 1980’s (Brady – Sandia),
then a description of a recently issued base case reference borehole design
(Arnold, Brady et al. 2011) from Bill Arnold (Sandia). Mike Driscoll (MIT) and
Fergus Gibb (Sheffield) outlined alternative designs and novel rock-welding and
sealing approaches (The individual presentations can be found below). A
summary of the meeting discussions follows.
Discussion
Deep borehole disposal is calculated to be as safe as traditional mined geologic
repositories (Brady, Arnold et al. 2009) but more flexible, less expensive
(Arnold, Brady et al. 2011), and more rapidly implemented. Minus
transportation and licensing costs, borehole disposal is estimated to cost about
$158/kg HM (Arnold, Brady et al. 2011), substantially less than the cost
estimated for Yucca Mountain and possibly less than the current collected
nuclear waste fund fee on a per kg basis.
A significant science and engineering literature of deep borehole disposal has
accumulated (see Table 1 and the presentations at the end of this report) and
important features of the approach have been pilot-tested (Patrick 1986).
Table 1. Partial listing of borehole technical articles
Subject
Article
Borehole Engineering analysis
(Juhlin and Sandstedt 1989; Juhlin and
Sandstedt 1989; Nirex 2004; Beswick
2008)
Borehole geochemistry
(Anderson 2004; Brady, Arnold et al.
2009)
Rock welding for borehole plugging (Gibb, Taylor et al. 2008)
Heat flow
(O’Brein, Cohen et al. 1979; Brady,
Arnold et al. 2009)
Cannister design (Hoag 2006)
Borehole support matrices (Gibb, McTaggart et al. 2008)
Site selection for disposal of Pu in
(Heiken and al. 1996)
boreholes